


But We Break Loose

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Animaniacs, Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crossover, Friendship, Gen, Healing, I asked myself, and then this happened ahahaha, cartoon logic, like the Warner siblings, once again the major character death is Pink Diamond, what if Spinel was an old cartoon locked in a movie studio water tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-11-23 15:03:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20894030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: "They lock us in the tower, whenever we get caught.  But we break loose and then vamoose and now you know the plot!" - "Animaniacs" Opening SongWhoever had been waiting in the abandoned water tower on the Rose Quartz Movie Studio lot finally breaks free.





	1. The Water Tower

**Author's Note:**

> I... do not have an excuse for this, but I hope you enjoy it, if you read. :P Thanks so much for giving this fic a try. Sorry for any mistakes I might've made!!!
> 
> Have a fantastic day~

Steven Universe’s mom made movies before she died. All sorts of things — elegant period pieces, sweeping space operas and romances that could get you choking on laughter and sobbing all in the same watery breath. Her company still kept on keepin’ on, nowadays, making those movies as well as they could without her. Steven should know. He’d grown up around the Rose Quartz Studio, after all, doing homework alongside delicate pastel sets... everything so mythic, dripping pale lace and rose petals and crystals like stars spread across an endless sky. He learned to talk chatting with off-duty actors, and he played the first games he’d ever learned in her immaculate gardens, beneath the shadow of an enormous water tower people said was probably haunted. 

It shuddered, sometimes, that water tower, or whispered with jaunty, muffled music. It dripped ink around the seams. Steven had been told not to go too close, because that was what his mom had instructed her dearest confidant, Pearl, to do. And Pearl had listened. Pearl pretty much _always_ listened, even when it didn’t exactly make a ton of sense, and Steven knew she had his mom’s name tattooed on her inner wrist in faint and longing script. A promise from ages ago that hadn’t worked out, somehow. (And _also_ why Pearl always wore long sleeves.)

Steven had never met his mom, except for watching her in her own films. She was scripted there, of course, larger than life, everything about her so polished and knowing. It was hard to imagine her tripping over those soft, stuff-of-fantasy dresses she wore all the time, nevermind failing a test or forgetting to do the laundry. Movie magic. Steven’s mom was made of movie magic, even though Pearl swore she’d been flesh and blood, once. 

“Likely story!” Steven joked. “_I_ know I’m half eerily-realistic cartoon!” and Pearl gave him a smile. A tired one, though.

People often gave Steven tired, hopeful smiles like that, to be honest. He was supposed to become what his mom had been for decades, when the time came for it — what she’d been since people started making movies anywhere, pretty much. He was supposed to be able to reach around in his brain and pull out wonders, someday, polished and powerful, cutting to the soul of things. Haha. Yeah. Pearl assured him that it wasn’t true: he could just be himself, make what he needed to make, and she and his dad would be proud of him no matter what... but Steven saw the way she looked at his goofy skit recordings, at his eager ukulele songs, at his excitement when he’d first learned he was gonna grow up and make stuff. Lovingly. Protectively. And, underneath it all, he thought maybe Pearl was a little bit afraid. 

At first, Steven figured Pearl was mostly just scared of him getting hurt around the studio. Hammering his hand to a board, or falling off sets, or accidentally annoying the kind of star that would sue. That sort of thing. Now, though — now that he was growing into his name, the “Mr. Universe” who got asked to sign all sorts of important documents — Steven was beginning to wonder if there had always been more to it. He’d watched his mom’s old movies just _so many times_, combing through them for anything that could make her real to him. It was hard to say if it helped at all, really. She drifted further and further away, it felt like, the more he learned.

Every day, Steven walked past his mom’s rattling, humming water tower on the way to a job he’d been born for. Every day, the gardens were perfect, and the sky was huge and thoughtful, and Pearl would think it was an unusual, super-special morning if she decided to splurge and drink a juice. Steven would play music for her when they leaned back in their chairs to take breaks, and they’d do interviews and watch storyboards unfold. Every day, Steven would scour his mind for what he should make. How could he be more like _her_? His mom, Rose Quartz, the founder of this studio that was his world. How could he be what everyone wanted? It was fun sometimes, and other times it was horrible, and Steven imagined it would go on forever and ever until someday he either magically figured everything out or failed so badly no one would let him keep trying. 

That’s what Steven _thought_, anyway... until the day the water tower with his mom’s delicate rose logo on it was completely splintered apart, and whatever had been in there got free. 

The tower looked like a wound, there in the center of the studio lot. Steven had eaten breakfast in his dad’s van that morning, listening to old music with long and very dramatic guitar solos, trying to ignore the too-loud announcement being broadcast through the studio. It was for a memorial ceremony and fundraiser to honor the anniversary of Steven’s mom’s death. He knew it was coming; he was already bracing himself for the inevitable. Those announcements had been his idea, actually, to make absolutely sure everybody knew when they were expected to dress nice. Come pay their respects, if they wanted to. And now... 

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Steven had a phone number written on the back of his hand that he was really supposed to have already called, this morning. He had a donut frosting stain on his shirt he was hoping nobody noticed. He froze, staring at the heavy darkness, at the twisted, rusting metal gash swaying over his mother’s perfect garden. This didn’t seem real. 

There had to be some mistake, here. Right? This wasn’t the way a morning in the Rose Quartz Studio went. And the ceremony-slash-fundraiser was that Saturday night — so many fancy people Steven barely knew would be coming... what would his mom want him to do, now?

The inside of the water tower was dripping with ink, when Steven went to go check it out with Pearl and a squad of studio security guards — there were hearts and smiley faces drawn on the walls and then scribbled away. It looked like someone had been counting the days in an increasingly frantic chart on the wall... someone had been swimming around in this dirty water, and swaying in a tire swing over it, and calling down to anybody passing by below every now and then. The rattling, jazzy music had come from a partially-submerged record player. There was a rotting checkerboard, and a bear with ruined stuffing, and an old-timey photograph of Steven’s mom in a tarnished frame. 

Steven stared. He looked down at his hands, wet with old, sharp-smelling ink. 

And Pearl said, “No... but it _can’t_ be.”

Beneath them, another of Steven’s _“the memorial is coming! Be ready!”_ messages was playing, chiming through the studio. Beneath them, change was coming. Very, very soon. 

Things were about to get downright funny. 


	2. Toontown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again~~~ Thank you so much for reading/coming back for chapter 2!!! I hope this turned out okay -- I had a lot of fun with it, but I'm super sorry for anything weird that might've slipped by me.
> 
> There's a Goodfeathers cameo in here, ahahaha. Well. A version of 'em, anyway.
> 
> Have a great day!!!

The Rose Quartz Studio was unraveling. Steven Universe’s dad clearly tried _very hard_ to understand when he texted about long, ink-dripping arms uncoiling out of people’s coffee mugs and dragging them inside, rubbery and twisting around in roller-coaster loops... and staircases that warped into winding slides while people were climbing them, leading who-knows-where... and office equipment that suddenly started hopping around like it was alive, scurrying away or bearing electric fangs whenever anyone tried to get a good look. He gave it an honest try, but Steven expected his dad would have better luck just running into the charging copy machine for himself.

(Not that Steven actually _wanted_ his dad to see the charging copy machine, mind you. That thing had a temper!)

Absolutely no work had gotten done that day, but at least three separate employees said they’d seen _someone_ looking for Rose Quartz herself. Someone who raged with a huge jagged smile when they told her Steven’s mom was gone, long dead, survived by a kid she’d never heard of. This someone left inky clown-shoe footprints behind her, and she disappeared into vents and twirled herself into dust storms and climbed out of people’s desk drawers. This someone couldn’t have been real at all. 

It was all like something out of a wacky cartoon. Scythe-sharp anvils dropped from the sky. The lake in the garden had transformed into a bubbling tar pit. But Steven’s mom had never _made_ wacky cartoons, not even once. Her work was so elegant. Heroic, surreal only as a transformative journey. Everyone said so. Her smile was serene and soft in pretty much every portrait ever made of her. 

Except now, the security guards found all their equipment gone to bouncy rubber, falling out of their hands. Whenever someone tried to pass through the Rose Quartz Studio gates, they slammed comically into a huge wall carefully painted to look like the world beyond. If you didn’t inspect it too closely, this backdrop-reality even seemed to move. 

One time when Steven opened his mouth, music trickled out. Like he’d become a breathing music box. He had never seen Pearl so completely panicked. They’d still been trying to put the studio back together, about then, hurrying around and gathering everyone they could up into some centralized space. They were hunting for evacuation routes, and attempting to contain whatever seemed especially dangerous, and... and whatever else they could think of, honestly. It wasn’t much.

“She would’ve told me,” Pearl insisted. “If this really is her, your mother would’ve told _me_, right?” 

“Um,” Steven tested his voice, making sure something _other_ than music could find its way out. Oh, good. Phew. “If this really is _who_, Pearl? What’s going on?” 

Pearl had wrapped her bony arms around herself, frozen in the hallway, then. She got like this sometimes — frantic, wanting — thinking about Steven’s mom. He squeezed her shoulder as gently as he could, trying to convey warmth and hope and all that other good stuff people said his mom’s movies had given everybody for ages.

“She’s — I mean — she isn’t supposed to... Rose told me...” 

“It’s okay, Pearl. It’s gonna be okay.”

Steven and Pearl were always telling each other things were going to be okay. Steven and his dad, too. Maybe someday one of them would actually believe it. Steven _had_, honestly, back when he was a kid.

“I’m sorry,” Pearl said. “I feel like I should have known.”

That was when a giggling, elastic voice called, “And now, for our next act! Time for a _real dramatic_ interruption,” — (and something was slithering along the floor, here, flat as a pancake and leaving an ink smear behind, so fast Steven almost couldn’t follow with his eyes. He saw a smile, he saw sharp pigtails that might’ve actually been a jester’s cap, he saw _dripping_, like a picture tilted upside down while it was still wet) — “Whaddaya say, folks?!”

She peeled herself out of the mosaic floor faster than a thought. Her ink was running off into the fabric of the world. She had been left in a water tower an awfully long time: this couldn’t be anyone else. 

The ink was running especially around this jester girl’s eyes, like she’d been crying — it was a new and tragic clown paint. She was stretching herself up so, so tall. Her arms, reaching for Steven, seemed to fill the hall. 

“_Where is she_?” the cartoon from the water tower asked. “My best friend, why’s she hiding, huh?”

“She’s dead —” Pearl started, and the cartoon from the water tower zipped her lips closed like an actual zipper. Just a quick, exasperated flick of her gloved hand. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that one,” the cartoon drawled, “Your little announcement’s on loop out there, or did you forget? But she was gonna come back for me any day now, so forgive me if I’m not in a listenin’ mood.”

Pearl scraped at the delicate rose-gold zipper that had been her mouth, eyes gone huge, fingers shaking. Steven had to get her out of here. Whatever else, didn’t he have to get Pearl out? Get her mouth fixed, figure out exactly what was going on, take a second to breathe. 

The cartoon was watching him, wistful, furious. “And if she _wasn’t_ about to come back for me... well,” she said. “What’s this whole dumb studio for, then, anyways?”

“I’m sorry,” Steven said. “If you can tell me who you are —”

The cartoon from the water tower laughed. It was a choking sound. She had a heart drawn on her shirt, and she grabbed at it with both hands. “Excuse you, pal, but I was here first. Who are _you_?”

“Steven Universe. Her son, but I want to help,” Steven tried, and the cartoon gasped. Flinched away. Then she reeled back, twisting her fingers together, stretching them into one huge mallet swung way up above her head. Winding up. Preparing to splatter. Beside Steven, Pearl had pulled a Sharpie from her coat pocket and was drawing a circle around them on the floor. It took a while for it to click together – what she’d been up to, here, exactly – but the minute the cartoon from the water tower saw that circle and understood what it was supposed to be a dark hole opened up at Steven’s feet. You know the kind. 

Steven and Pearl seemed to fall for quite a while, and when they landed it was back in the water tower where the cartoon — his mom’s cartoon? His mom’s best friend, once? — had been waiting. They sputtered in the inky deep, spitting out sour water. Pearl’s lips were still zippered shut, and she was holding on to Steven’s arm with a ferociously protective look in her eye. 

Steven’s phone had gotten completely soaked, of course. He fished it out of his pocket, thinking Pearl might be able to type up what was going on or something for him. No luck, though. 

“I have to go back in and find her,” Steven said. “I can still talk to her, at least. Maybe you’d better keep rounding everybody up? We’ll get your lips fixed. I promise.”

But Pearl shook her head. She grabbed Steven by the wrist and, as silently as they could go, led him into the studio’s main facility again through a back way. They had to go pretty carefully, see — that charging copy machine was still probably on a rampage somewhere, and a few parakeets one of the directors had been keeping as pets had recently started talking with human voices and formed some sort of mafia. 

Steven had thought he’d seen every inch of this place, over the years. But... joke’s on him. He never could’ve guessed his mom’s hallways wound down so deep — he felt a little sick, seeing where the ethereal shimmery walls dissolved into yellowed brick and buzzing electric lights. His mom’s famous movie magic flickering away into something rotten. 

Maybe Steven never would have wanted to know about any of this, if he were painfully honest with himself. If he could’ve gone on the way he was and nobody would have gotten hurt. But... people had been hurting since before he was born. Clearly. Pearl was right beside him shivering and soaked in sticky ink-water even now because of all that hurt. People would have been hurting for ages, whatever Steven wanted, and all he could do now was try and make things as right as possible. 

The air smelled so sick down there, in the deep places of his mom’s studio. Pearl was walking with her head down, her fingers clamped around Steven’s wrist like she was afraid he’d drip away into ink, too. When she glanced back over her shoulder, her eyes seemed to scream apologies. 

Pearl took Steven to a tiny desk deep beneath the world. There was a projector by that desk, and notebooks full of smiling drawings. A jester girl, just like the one bending the rules of space and time around the studio that day, only her smile was warm and chipper, here. Her ink wasn’t dripping into something lonely, something dangerous, yet. In so many of the drawings that jester girl was dancing, or juggling, or twisting herself into playful rubber pretzels. 

_Spinel_. Her name was Spinel, and the show she’d been drawn for was called “Hijinks Ensue.” That was Steven’s mom’s handwriting, yeah... and once upon a time, Spinel herself had been sketched with so much care.

Underneath the desk was a small, battered safe. Pearl didn’t know the combination — she tried a dozen of them, but here was _another_ thing about Steven’s mom that would wind up haunting her. In the end, Steven broke into the safe himself, smashing it with a hammer like someone might in a cartoon. 

He snickered when he did it. These Toontown rules could’ve been so fun, right? If the day had been going a little bit differently; if the people who’d been swallowed up into their coffee cups had been coming back. If it hadn’t sounded like this happy cartoon girl from his mom’s notebooks was thinking about destroying the studio. Steven couldn’t even blame Spinel for considering the idea, really. The desperation in her pie-cut eyes looked so much like love. _What had his mom done?_

Steven had been wondering how to replicate Rose Quartz’s magic formula pretty much forever, but he’d never expected he would have to think about how to reverse it, too. Heh. Well. Let’s see if he could get _that_ right. 

The safe was full of film reels, it turned out. Pearl scooped an armful of them up and started fiddling with the ancient projector.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Shhh, PS, one more thing -- what happens with Pearl's lips here? I'm sorry, Pearl. But also, it was supposed to kinda connect with her forced silence in regards to Pink Diamond in canon... An AU-ified take on that????? Idk.
> 
> (Thank you, again. :P))


	3. On Today’s Episode of “Hijinks Ensue”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again!!! :D Thanks for coming back for chapter three~~~ I hope you enjoy it, if you read. (And I also hope your week is going well!!! It's been a tumultuous one for me, but... onward we go, ahahaha........)

_Our Hero and My Best Friend Spinel, Starring In... _

_... The Trouble with Starships!_

_... In for a Penny, in for an Avalanche!_

_... Look What I Reeled In!_

And just so, so, many more. It was unmistakable. The jester girl in the playful skits on all those reels Steven’s mom had hidden away — shifting her arm into a bendy-flesh fishing pole, say, or steering a starship through a meteor shower and accidentally thwarting a troupe of space pirates, turning on her head and clapping her heels together as easy as coiling her arms into bouncy springs... this was the cartoon from the water tower, Spinel, as she was originally meant to be. 

Spinel stumbled into saving the world, and she rescued a town of penguins from a candy mountain avalanche, and she cracked wise in a way that made it feel like the audience was always in on the joke. Even when Steven didn’t exactly _get_ that joke, watching Spinel’s cartoons: when the jokes were dated, or referencing stuff he’d never heard of. Even then, it felt so much like Spinel was doing her very best to entertain a friend. Saying what she already knew would make that friend laugh.

You could hear Rose Quartz’s laughter lingering on the edge of things, actually, watching through those reels. It was honest laughter, shrieking and silly, like Steven had never heard from her before. He could tell it was her voice all the same, though, just the way he might recognize his own shadow. Spinel had wanted to entertain Stevens’s mom, even though she called her “Pink” at first, in the private tapes after the nonsensical cartoon cameras stopped rolling. “Pink” wasn’t such a different name from “Rose,” if Steven thought about it.

_“Hey Pink! Wanna go down to the malt shop?”_

_“I could try that last stunt again, Pink. If you think I could do it better.”_

_“Ooo, maybe those other cartoon makin’ fellas would wanna play some games with us! Should I go see?”_

Spinel’s pigtails-slash-jester-hat had formed little hearts on the sides of her head, once, but the ink was running into something different, now. Maybe that was just what happened to cartoons if you left them in the wet for years and years. Maybe Steven’s mom had thought Spinel would break out way long ago... would give up on her best friend coming back for her, once she felt the silence stretching all around. Or maybe “Pink” had thought her friend’s ink might just dissolve away into the water tower, leaving nothing behind to remember her old name but a dirty puddle and that waterlogged teddy bear. 

Steven couldn’t know. Did Steven _want_ to know? 

The film reel skits got halting and strange, after a while, and it ached in Steven’s guts to see Spinel’s cheeky grins go so shaky. So desperate and hopeful, when _he_ knew the reels were ending soon. When he had already seen what came next. 

Steven Universe had always known his mom’s world was made of movie magic, impossible and eternal, untouchable as the sky. He didn’t realize he and Pearl weren’t alone in the old study — not just desks and sketchbooks, heavy shadows and that crackling screen — until Pearl was shaking his shoulder, humming intently through her zipped-shut lips. He didn’t realize he had been crying until a stretched-out inky finger caught one of the tears off his cheek. 

For a second, when he whipped his whole self around to see her — to block Pearl and to _see her_, though Pearl just scooped up a desk lamp to swing like a weapon and slid between them again all the same — Steven thought Spinel looked sort of like her old self. The self still doing an earnest, goofy little dance on the projector screen just out of sight. Her eyes were wide and vulnerable, despite the tear-streak clown paint. Her touch against his cheek was almost nervous. Spinel hadn’t tried to comfort another living thing since before Steven was born, he knew that, although she had comforted her friend Pink just _so many times _throughout those after-the-skit video segments. 

“Steven Universe,” Spinel said, as if the words stung her. Poison running down her throat. “Yer not supposed to _cry_, watching those.”

“I was laughing earlier,” Steven promised. It was true, though maybe he would never know how his laughter could’ve tasted if he’d encountered Spinel’s cartoons under friendlier circumstances. He watched an apprehensive spark pass through those dripping pie-cut eyes of hers, then. Spinel considering _laughter_, after all these years. “I like your skit with the dragon that’s actually a bunch of knights in a suit best, I think. And then when you made your hand into that _other_ dragon —”

Spinel was a wind-up tornado, coiled and ready to spring. Just like in her cartoon short, _“Our Hero and My Best Friend Spinel, Starring In... The Toyshop of Terror!”_ She was still watching Steven’s tears, now. She had trapped so many studio employees in their own coffee cups, that day, and melted the cafeteria into bubbling, incredibly-unappetizing slime. The last time Steven had seen her, she’d been about ready to mallet him into goo. Hadn’t she? 

“You really didn’t know me, huh?” Spinel breathed. Steven hadn’t noticed it before, but the words “_Pink Diamond”_ were written in twirly script on her wrist. Like signing a piece of art, he realized. Same as Pearl’s tattoo. The fonts were so different, but it was the same old story. “Steven Universe. Pink’s only son.”

“Well, no —“ Steven started to say. 

“_No_?”

Steven took a deep, centering breath, like his dad had taught him to do before playing his ukulele in front of people, if he got nervous. He didn’t know the right words to get Spinel to understand. It was possible there were no “right words” — no special formula, now, no movie magic, no puppet strings anywhere behind the scenes. All Steven could speak was his truth.

That was all he’d ever been able to do, really.

“No, Spinel. I’m sorry. But I wish I _had_ known you! I can barely imagine how much fun this place could’ve been with you around. But I’ve met you, now, and I know you wanted to… to attack me?... But I also know you deserved so much better than this. A better friend, a warmer place in the garden than some leaky water tower. I could be your friend – I think you could have _some_ other friend, anyway, whoever it is – and we can figure this out together. I can help you—”

Steven spoke what he could, and for a little while the cartoon from the water tower listened. Behind them, the goofy short they’d been watching on Steven’s mom’s old projector wound on. This was one of the last ones Pearl had pulled from the safe, from one of the last days Spinel had spent out under the sky. When had Pink Diamond decided to throw all this away? When she’d decided she wanted to be something new, Steven thought; when she’d decided to carve herself a different legacy. But Spinel could’ve learned new jokes, shuffling out the material her “Pink” wasn’t about anymore and learning fresher tricks. She could have tried out different shows, growing and learning as a performer. As a _friend_. So… why?

Spinel listened, and every now and then she glanced at the screen behind Steven’s head, eyes still so huge and dripping. She remembered filming this, Steven could tell. She remembered the songs, and all her lines. Some of the melodies were even a little bit familiar, weren’t they? Maybe Spinel had been practicing these, way high up in her water tower, as Steven passed by unknowingly beneath. 

And then, when Spinel struck, it was with all her coiled rage and hurt. The fury of lifetimes. It was with a scream that rattled the yellowed lights above them into chipped glass and stayed ringing between Steven’s ears. She was a dust storm, arms gone to scythes and mallets and whatever else she could think of. She might never feel like what she used to be, not ever again in this movie-magic world. 

But when Spinel struck, it was at the projector. At the walls and the desk, and the safe left propped open underneath. It wasn’t at Steven and Pearl at all. 

Maybe it could’ve been. Maybe it almost was. 

But not this time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhh!!! Another PS/afterthought-dealie:
> 
> Spinel does the thing she does here -- attacking the projector and all -- as a reference to the scene in canon where she attacks the communicator in the garden. It felt like she was venting rage while intentionally trying not to hurt Steven, there, so.... Idk. I thought it fit!!!
> 
> Thank you, again! :')


	4. Let’s Try Something New

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again!!! :D :D :D Thank you so much for sticking with this story through to the end. I truly hope you enjoy the final chapter, and this next week turns out to be amazing for you!!
> 
> Awww I've had so much fun writing this AU. :') Thanks, again, for reading!!!

One of the major things to know about old cartoons is, a lot of the bad stuff that happens doesn’t have to stick. You might see a character get smooshed by a collapsing movie studio office at the end of one episode, but as soon as the next show starts up they’ll be right as rain, with all their organs and teeth and charming catchphrases back in the right spots.

They’re stretchy, bendable, laughing creatures, for a stretchy, bendable, laughing world. 

That was the sort of world Steven’s mom’s best friend Spinel had been designed for. So when she noticed Steven screaming, _“The roof is caving in! Spinel! We have to get out of here!”_ it took her a second to realize he was afraid she might get hurt. She’d really given that studio room what-for, hadn’t she? Rest in Pieces. She might regret that, when the reality sunk in. If she imagined Pink Diamond bent over her desk just one more time, snickering down into her pen as she drew something super fun to life. That desk was splinters now, just like the water tower. 

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about her at her best. Don’t _think_...

It took Spinel another long second to realize that even if _she_ wouldn’t get hurt in a crumbling basement room, Steven and this skinny lady with the sea-foam pantsuit on might get beat up pretty bad. But they hadn’t ditched her here, even so, had they? Steven was standing just a couple feet away — well within the reach of Spinel’s wheeling mallet-arms, mind you, if she aimed wrong — and holding out a hand for her to take. The pantsuit lady was closer to the door, beckoning for Steven, humming something furious through zipped-shut lips. 

Oh, shoot! _Spinel_ had left her lips like that, hadn’t she? She snapped real quick, unzipping them, and Ms. Pantsuit was immediately shouting, “Steven, _come on_! We don’t have time!”

The ceiling was cracking apart, now, raining cobwebs and plaster. It was awfully dark, too, probably ‘cause Spinel had murdered most of the lights. 

But here’s another thing to know about old cartoons: pretty much everybody’s got their bag of tricks. Even if they don’t know how to be what they used to be anymore. Even if they’re just kind of realizing they don’t like the idea of their best friend’s (former best friend’s?) kid getting smooshed for real. Steven didn’t seem like a bad guy. Not really. Spinel had seriously wanted to make him cry, until she’d seen him crying. And now, she knew he liked her skits. Knew he’d taken the time to learn them; knew he would stand there as bits of ceiling fell on him, trying to bring her out into the light again. 

If _Steven_ had known Spinel was in the water tower, she wouldn’t have been playing solo checkers for such a long time, she was pretty dang sure. She wanted to believe that, anyway. It was tough, but “wanting” was some kinda step, too, probably.

Spinel glanced around at the ruined office, and then —trying to remember how she struck the pose in her old comedy shorts — spread her arms playfully and winked. She shook out her fingers, bent down, and casually pulled up the screen of reality. 

It was an old cartoon trick. Spinel had done it plenty of times, on her show. Grab the edge of the screen and tear the set away. Something else would be waiting underneath. Probably something funny, too, and significantly _less_ like a collapsing building.

The possibly-funny place Spinel’s trick took them all to this time turned out to be a... vehicle? of some kind? Where a baffled, balding man with sandals and otherwise super long hair was talking on something Spinel had to assume was an outer-space communicator. He was pacing back and forth, too, waving his arms and trying to explain that there was a big wall plopped right in front of the Rose Quartz Studio, somehow, and that everybody’s demolition equipment was just bouncing off of it like rubber and/or self-combusting into inky fireworks. 

Aha. Um. _That_ was probably Spinel’s fault, too. She had to admit. 

But the thing about cartoon logic was Spinel could wish a whole lot of it away, back to normal. She could slip people out of their coffee cups, and disband parakeet mafias, and...

And hopefully that would be enough. Roll credits? Steven stood there, gaping, for now, with bits of ceiling flaking off him and onto the vehicle floor. He was still holding his hand out, like he was gonna pull Spinel from the wreckage or something. It was interesting, getting a better look at him. He was so like Pink had been, once, with fluffy hair and soft eyes. But there was something warmer about him, too. Something that reminded Spinel of roots, winding deep under the earth. If Pink had been the flowers, the climbing roses, then Steven was something else. 

Spinel considered taking Steven’s hand, now, and shaking it. Maybe trying to start over, in a little way, ‘cause the kid hadn’t known any better... ‘cause she’d only ever wanted to be somebody’s friend, in the end, and Steven had talked to her like he thought she was entertaining. But then Steven and Ms. Pantsuit both got dragged into a swinging bear hug by the guy with the outer-space communicator, so... so Spinel laughed nervously, and took a step away. 

Communicator Guy had thought Steven and his buddy were in real danger. Thought maybe he’d lost them. And he was holding onto them so tenderly, now... Such precious cargo. Had this been Pink Diamond’s —?

Was this Steven’s _dad_?

Spinel wasn’t sure how to process that. She had never used to wonder if she was wanted one place or another — she’d always figured Pink wanted to be with her just the same as she wanted to be with Pink. Did _Steven_ want her here, now, though? Or had she already messed up too badly for him to want her anywhere at all? Had it meant something about her, something irredeemable, that her very best friend in the universe had shoved her away into such a dank cold place and left her to drip apart into... into _this_? 

_Not good enough._ Spinel thought maybe she wasn’t good enough, hadn’t ever been good enough, and possibly now she wasn’t good at all. Maybe she should slip away before anything got worse. That one was a dark, sinking thought, like when a projector screen flickered into static for a second and you had to wonder if the show was gonna keep rolling on. If the pictures would come back. If the music was about to go wonky and wrong, and then maybe stutter away completely.

Except Steven remembered Spinel sooner than all that, didn’t he? Steven reached out for her, and he said, “Hey, Dad — where are my manners? I want you to meet Spinel.” 

Spinel stumbled forward, and this time she took Steven’s hand in both of her own. This time, when her lip started shaking, when her eyes went blurry with tears and ink, there was someone who pulled her into his arms. Someone who didn’t jerk away when she ended up coiling her own arms around and around him like shaking rubber-hose boa constrictors. Someone who told his dad that maybe it was time to show some of their jokey music videos... some of their less polished, less mythic stuff... at that memorial ceremony thing coming up. 

Spinel would learn what it meant to have Steven clear a seat for her between himself and Ms. Pantsuit — Pearl, her name was _Pearl_ — at the memorial. She’d learn what it meant that Steven didn’t feel like he should really become his mom anymore... At least not exactly, anyway. Geez, she would learn Steven had felt like he needed to become like his mom in the first place, too! She’d learn that she wasn’t the cartoon she used to be... that sometimes she’d slip, and doubt Steven and all her new friends around the studio, and wonder if there was any hope for her in the new world at all... but that whatever she was now could still come bouncing back, even if for the first time she hadn’t actually been okay at the end of an episode. What had happened with Pink would leave a mark. The old office and the water tower would stay broken until somebody cleared them away, no matter how many cafeterias Spinel rebuilt out of burbling sludge. 

It was rare for a cartoon to get a redesign as drastic as this one, but Steven didn’t seem to think Spinel was such a downright villainous character now. 

It could have been… welp. It _could’ve_ been Steven had wanted someone like Spinel around for a long time. Actually. A friend who didn’t know to be scared for his future, and who had never expected any masterpiece movies from him. Somebody to do double-act comedy shows with, at the very least, down the line. 

For now, Spinel cried until she didn’t feel like crying anymore. Steven rubbed her shoulder, just a little, and when that _“the memorial is coming!”_ announcement started playing through the world outside again they all listened together. 

“Hello? Greg?” said a voice on the other end of the outer-space communicator. It had been dropped on the floor, just a little ways away. “We just got to the studio and... hm. There’s no wall around it or anything!”

Not anymore there’s not. 

_Wink_. 


End file.
